"infusion" of the Human Soul?

[Robertanthony]

Infusion of the soul occurred when God said “let us make man in our image”, and “breathed the breath of life” in to him, to make him “a living soul” (nepesh); the rational, immortal soul (not shared by any animal) is the image of God; becoming Christ-like, that is, holiness, is the likeness of God. Man did not exist before he had a soul; souls did not exist before man existed. The two were created at the same time, and this is as far as the Church proclaims (that we are descended from original parents, and the universe/multiverse was created ex nihilo: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, of all things seen and unseen”…); as to date it, this is an impossibility in any model of creation, whether you believe in a young universe (and/or earth), an ancient universe (and/or earth), are a progressive creationist, a strict creationist, a theistic evolutionist, or an intelligent design advocate.

Essentially this - the soul makes the man, by definition. Beyond that, I’m not a believer in evolutionary doctrine/the modern Darwinian synthesis (pardon the pun), but when man first got a soul is simple: it is when man first came to be. As for when man first came to be, that’s the challenge to answer. You can chime in with me and read Genesis and the genealogies literally (which still doesn’t allow precise dating of Adam, as Genesis is silent on how long he was without Eve, and after that, how long until they Fell); you can hew to theistic evolutionary doctrine, to progressive creationism, to the framework hypothesis, to any of a hundred varieties of old-earth creationism, to intelligent design (i.e. evolution with God strapped on), and I’m sure there are plenty more - none allow the date to be precisely fixed, and for those that lay claim to a common ancestry/common descent, one can only date it very inaccurately, to “modern man” (likely sometime in the last 500ka according to the commonly used scientific/geologic dating system; cut two zeros off the end and you’ll have a more accurate answer).

Today is the first time I ever read the part in bold and construed it as possibly meaning: man existed prior to Adam, some might call him a “hominid”, but he didn’t have a soul,.The passage could mean: Let’s take this soul-less man and infuse him with an immortal soul. The first man to be graced with a soul would have been Adam, followed by his mate Eve. Quick, I need to get in touch with Scott Hahn ASAP.

 

[JDaniel]

The soul is the Form of the body taken together with the matter of the whole body. It is not located in the head any more than it is located in the foot. It is the entirety of the body, as St. Augustine says, (De Trin. vi, 6), that “in each body the whole soul is in the whole body, and in each part is entire.”

Further, St. Thomas says, (Summa Theologica, First Part, Q 76, Art. 8) "I answer that, As we have said, if the soul were united to the body merely as its motor, we might say that it is not in each part of the body, but only in one part through which it would move the others. But since the soul is united to the body as its form, it must necessarily be in the whole body, and in each part thereof. For it is not an accidental form, but the substantial form of the body. Now the substantial form perfects not only the whole, but each part of the whole."While the head is vitally important to the rest of the body, as a brain should be, and even though it contains the totality of the soul, so also does every other part of the body, e.g., the foot.

The question I would ask is, “How?”

God bless,
jd

 

[GEddie]

The soul is the Form of the body taken together with the matter of the whole body. It is not located in the head any more than it is located in the foot. It is the entirety of the body, as St. Augustine says, (De Trin. vi, 6), that “in each body the whole soul is in the whole body, and in each part is entire.”

Further, St. Thomas says, (Summa Theologica, First Part, Q 76, Art. 8) "I answer that, As we have said, if the soul were united to the body merely as its motor, we might say that it is not in each part of the body, but only in one part through which it would move the others. But since the soul is united to the body as its form, it must necessarily be in the whole body, and in each part thereof. For it is not an accidental form, but the substantial form of the body. Now the substantial form perfects not only the whole, but each part of the whole."While the head is vitally important to the rest of the body, as a brain should be, and even though it contains the totality of the soul, so also does every other part of the body, e.g., the foot.

The question I ask is, “How?”

God bless,
jd

Soul is life, and as such interpenetrates all parts of the body. It is more “active” in the head than, eg, the skin, because soul functions such as consciousness reside in your head. But soul is present in your skin too, which enables your sense of touch (and bodily intimacy).

ICXC NIKA

 

[JDaniel]

Soul is life, and as such interpenetrates all parts of the body. It is more “active” in the head than, eg, the skin, because soul functions such as consciousness reside in your head. But soul is present in your skin too, which enables your sense of touch (and bodily intimacy).

ICXC NIKA

GE:

Interesting. I’m not completely sold on it yet. You see, “soul” equals “Primary Matter in an essential synthesis with Form,” for St. Thomas and, it seems, for St. Augustine as well. In humans it is understood as substantial form, and equals the entire body. I think of the head and body as extensions of the brain, as outer extremities, as it were. The brain allows things to be intelligible to us, as well as allowing us to be able to sense stuff. But, while we think our souls are immediately behind our eyes, are we sure? Poke a needle in a toe and you can measure the flow of neuronal activity all along the path to a point in the brain. But, that may be because that is where the “reactive part” of our mind interfaces with our muscular system and makes the body move away from the source of the pain.

Accidentally touch a hot ember with a bare foot at a campfire, that you didn’t see beforehand, and your brain seems to migrate to your foot. You instantly discover that your foot is an essential part of your brain processes. In fact, the pain may prevent all of the other processes of the brain, at least while it is present, sometimes to the point of causing unconsciousness. It seems that you don’t analyze this in your toe, but, the point of the pain is blisteringly as present as if the ember had touched a part of your brain itself.

God bless,
jd

 

[GEddie]

GE:

Interesting. I’m not completely sold on it yet. You see, “soul” equals “Primary Matter in an essential synthesis with Form,” for St. Thomas and, it seems, for St. Augustine as well. In humans it is understood as substantial form, and equals the entire body. I think of the head and body as extensions of the brain, as outer extremities, as it were. The brain allows things to be intelligible to us, as well as allowing us to be able to sense stuff. But, while we think our souls are immediately behind our eyes, are we sure? Poke a needle in a toe and you can measure the flow of neuronal activity all along the path to a point in the brain. But, that may be because that is where the “reactive part” of our mind interfaces with our muscular system and makes the body move away from the source of the pain.

Accidentally touch a hot ember with a bare foot at a campfire, that you didn’t see beforehand, and your brain seems to migrate to your foot. You instantly discover that your foot is an essential part of your brain processes. In fact, the pain may prevent all of the other processes of the brain, at least while it is present, sometimes to the point of causing unconsciousness. It seems that you don’t analyze this in your toe, but, the point of the pain is blisteringly as present as if the ember had touched a part of your brain itself.

jd

No problem with that, but this works only because of the meters of nerves that join your fingertips, toetips, etc, to your head. The system works so well that we are not aware of it, however, the action is still in your head. If your arm goes numb because it has caught under your body while you are asleep, your soul is still there, keeping the skin, muscles etc alive; but there is no perception or consciousness in that limb until the link to your head is working again.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Theophorus]

St. Thomas would say that while the soul informs every part of the matter of your body, in order to think abstractly we require certain physical elements. Without the five senses to give us the information and the physical memory to store the sense information we have received, while we would still be rational by nature we wouldn’t be doing much in the way of thinking.

 

[JNdoum]

Ok, I’ll take your statement at face value, as my only experience with Latin is to live in Latin America

However, are you sure that animus did not derive from anima, in the sense of a being possessing “anima” via breathing?

I’ll ask a friend who teaches Latin about this.

ICXC NIKA

I really have no idea whether this is the case, but I’d love to know (I’m a liguistics freak, and everything involving language interests me very much). It may be so, and I’m pretty sure the two are probably related, though I have no real clue based off of actual evidence, so it’s all guessing on my part. Let me know what you find out.

I don’t know if this actually clears up the question, but I did find this online:

Dear Latin Teacher,

Would you please explain the difference between the Latin roots anima and animus. It seems both words have overlapping meanings. Also the cognate of animus in English seems to have a different meaning than the Latin word.

Thank you, Steve

Dear Steve,

You are right that the Latin roots anima and animus have overlapping meanings, both with the basic meaning soul or spirit.

The difference is that the feminine form, anima, has the root meaning breath, air, life force, while the masculine form, animus, has the root meaning mind or intellect.

While the Latin root animus does mean spirit, it has a secondary meaning of passion or wrath. (Think of the English word spirited.) So in English, our words animus and animosity are derived from this secondary meaning of the Latin root animus.

Animus in English means a strong dislike, but also an intention or a purpose. In Jungian psychology it means the masculine nature found in a woman.

Anima in English means life force or soul. In Jungian psychology it means the feminine nature found in a man.

The two words are so close in meaning that it is often difficult to distinguish the source of English derivatives:

From animus:

animosity: spiritedness, hatred.


animadvert: to criticize; to turn one's mind to, notice. (In Latin, animum advertere = to turn the mind to, notice, pay attention to; euphemistically, to kill, eliminate.)

From anima:

animal: a creature with a life force and often breath.


animate: to breath life into, to move to action.


inanimate: lifeless, dull, not animated.


animism: the belief that natural objects have a life force or soul.

This is not an exhaustive list, but I hope it does help to illustrate a very slight difference in the two Latin roots.

Hope this helps, and thanks for asking a Latin teacher.

Sincerely,

John

 

[GEddie]

John,

Ok, I asked him; and he said, to the best of his knowledge, animal etc. derive from anima, not animus. An animal is a being possessing anima.

I imagined this to be the case because to this day in Spanish, the word for soul, as the debodied spiritual remnant of human life, is “anima”.

ICXC NIKA

 

[GEddie]

The soul is the Form of the body taken together with the matter of the whole body. It is not located in the head any more than it is located in the foot. It is the entirety of the body, as St. Augustine says, (De Trin. vi, 6), that “in each body the whole soul is in the whole body, and in each part is entire.”

Further, St. Thomas says, (Summa Theologica, First Part, Q 76, Art. 8) "I answer that, As we have said, if the soul were united to the body merely as its motor, we might say that it is not in each part of the body, but only in one part through which it would move the others. But since the soul is united to the body as its form, it must necessarily be in the whole body, and in each part thereof. For it is not an accidental form, but the substantial form of the body. Now the substantial form perfects not only the whole, but each part of the whole."While the head is vitally important to the rest of the body, as a brain should be, and even though it contains the totality of the soul, so also does every other part of the body, e.g., the foot.

The question I would ask is, “How?”

God bless,
jd

However, physiologically, a human body can remain alive if it loses one or more limbs, or even being born without them. It still holds soul.

Sever the head, however, or severely injure it or even cleanly break the neck; and life/soul depart.

Clearly the soul is more vitally entwined with the head than with other body regions, even though it fills the body.

Also, while internal organs (and now even limbs) can be transplanted, brains cannot. I.e., each human nervous system is uniquely imprinted by “soul” in a way that other body areas are not.

ICXC NIKA

 

[greylorn]

Watching a PBS program dealing with evolution, I got to wondering. Does the Church have a position as to what stage of human evolution God first “infused” a soul into homonids?

For example, was it “homo erectus” or “homo habilis” or some other stage of evolution?

Or, was God more subtle than that? For example, did infusion occur when homonids first became self-aware or when they first believed in a greater power?

Thanks very much.

The “soul” is the source of consciousness. Therefore the notion that pre-human critters needed to become conscious before getting a soul makes no sense.

The development of pre-human critters was a slow engineering process, because God had not figured out how to connect “souls” to critters before making some critters. There was a gradual “infusion” process, beginning with the engineering of an interface within the hominid brain that was capable of connecting the brain to a “soul.” At that point, the “soul” probably did not do much, and the interface may have been passive only, meaning that the “soul” was entirely along for the ride.

Next step would have been to expand the brain-“soul” connection so that “soul” might have been able to exert some minor control over brain-level choices. Later, the ability of “soul” to control the brain was expanded. This connection lies within the cortex, which was poorly developed in early hominids, so you can trace the expansion of the connection through the growing expansion of the cortex.

Next, speech centers were engineered, and refined so that even an ignorant, barely conscious “soul” could make some use of them. This was a difficult process, and several separate lines of experimentation were carried out separately within different populations, culminating with the recent extinction of Neanderthal man.

You can locate these probable milestones of brain-“soul” interface by actually learning (reading), with a view toward figuring things out for yourself. You will not find helpful information on PBS, which is a progressive liberal network, and entirely atheistic.

 

[JNdoum]

John,

Ok, I asked him; and he said, to the best of his knowledge, animal etc. derive from anima, not animus. An animal is a being possessing anima.

I imagined this to be the case because to this day in Spanish, the word for soul, as the debodied spiritual remnant of human life, is “anima”.

ICXC NIKA

Thank you, and my name isn’t John; that’s the guy from the website’s name. My name is actually Joseph. I’m sorry I didn’t make that clearer.

 

[Khalid]

However, physiologically, a human body can remain alive if it loses one or more limbs, or even being born without them. It still holds soul.

Sever the head, however, or severely injure it or even cleanly break the neck; and life/soul depart.

Clearly the soul is more vitally entwined with the head than with other body regions, even though it fills the body.

Also, while internal organs (and now even limbs) can be transplanted, brains cannot. I.e., each human nervous system is uniquely imprinted by “soul” in a way that other body areas are not.

ICXC NIKA

This isn’t precisely true: look at the lobotomized, men who have suffered extreme brain injuries, etc.

 

[GEddie]

This isn’t precisely true: look at the lobotomized, men who have suffered extreme brain injuries, etc.

Sure, there are brain injuries from which survival is possible. But even then, the person is far more profoundly disabled/diminished than by a crushed hand or ankle, etc. The soul’s expression through the body is diminished from the head injury, far more than from a permanent injury to a limb.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Sample]

Two observations:

1. Are people praying for the souls of Neanderthals in Purgatory or is that duty reserved only for Cro-Magnons and their descendents?
2. Fraternal twins can fuse into a single baby before birth. One or two souls?

Regarding the Church’s stance on infusion of ancestral souls, Cardinal Pell of Australia gave his opinion. It gets into evolution so that can’t be talked about here.

 

[Khalid]

I’m praying for all the souls of the last fifty-seven hundred and some years - that is, all of them!

 

[edwest2]

Watching a PBS program dealing with evolution, I got to wondering. Does the Church have a position as to what stage of human evolution God first “infused” a soul into homonids?

For example, was it “homo erectus” or “homo habilis” or some other stage of evolution?

Or, was God more subtle than that? For example, did infusion occur when homonids first became self-aware or when they first believed in a greater power?

Thanks very much.

There is no scientific answer to this question. Our first parents were two individual people. There are no scientific papers or studies regarding the soul.

Peace,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

No. The first time a human existed was when they got a human soul. That’s one of the things that makes us unique.

The Church does not teach that.

Peace,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

Where does it say that the human soul resides in the head?

I agree with a previous post that we probably got our soul when we were able to distinguish good from evil… Hence where the story of Adam and Eve fits in.

There is no foundation for that statement, either from science or the Church.

Peace,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

Today is the first time I ever read the part in bold and construed it as possibly meaning: man existed prior to Adam, some might call him a “hominid”, but he didn’t have a soul,.The passage could mean: Let’s take this soul-less man and infuse him with an immortal soul. The first man to be graced with a soul would have been Adam, followed by his mate Eve. Quick, I need to get in touch with Scott Hahn ASAP.

"Adam and Eve: Real People

"It is equally impermissible to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen. 2–3) as a fiction. A question often raised in this context is whether the human race descended from an original pair of two human beings (a teaching known as monogenism) or a pool of early human couples (a teaching known as polygenism).

"In this regard, Pope Pius XII stated: “When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own” (Humani Generis 37).

“The story of the creation and fall of man is a true one, even if not written entirely according to modern literary techniques. The Catechism states, “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents” (CCC 390).”

Peace,
Ed